


night of the ravens

by etoilette



Series: AU-gust 2020 [8]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, DC Comics References, Gangbang, M/M, Past Character Death, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:20:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25798060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etoilette/pseuds/etoilette
Summary: “How are you alive?” Joker asks up at Crow, his voice strangled. “I saw you die.”“I know you did, Akira,” Crow says, and Joker already feels like he wants to combust because he sounds exactly like Crow did - his voice soft and sweet and light despite the cruel smile on his face. “I know you watched me without lifting a single finger. After all the times I helped you in the past, you repaid me by doing nothing.”ORThere have been whispers in Tokyo of the Court of Ravens - undead assassins under the command of the highest order in the city. The Talon sent after the vigilante Joker bears an uncanny resemblance to a former hero and friend.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Others, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Series: AU-gust 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860436
Comments: 6
Kudos: 62





	night of the ravens

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off of the Court of Owls storyline. It was meant to feature some elements of Under the Red Hood, but I don't think I accomplished that very well? Even if you don't read DC Comics, it's fine, in my opinion, because it's fairly straightforward. 
> 
> Please do mind the tags. Most of the really bad stuff happens during flashbacks, but it's still described in some detail. Not in enough details that I think this would warrant an explicit tag, but enough that I do wish to re-iterate it.
> 
> Written for Day #8 of AU-gust: Superheroes and Supervillains AU.

Joker stares down the barrel of the gun, past the dark weapon clutched in a clawed glove, into the blank black mask of his assailant. The boot is heavy on his chest, the heel of it digging cruelly through the fabric of the Joker vest. 

He tries to summon a gust of wind to blow back the assassin, but through the visor of the helmet, he sees the cold eyes flash a bright red and he can feel the mental walls come down once more. Joker’s access to his aerokinesis shuts down completely, so sudden and aggressive that he feels his teeth click, as if the assassin had forced Joker down physically.

Joker supposes that “the assassin” is the wrong moniker to be bestowing upon him, but looking up at him, he still can’t wrap his head around the idea that Crow is  _ here _ and  _ alive _ and baring his teeth in a feral grin, in a picture-perfect imitation of the expression he had always worn when he could let loose in battle, when he could strip away the sweet and gentle hero mask he had to don in public.

“C-Crow,” he says and he coughs as Crow steps down harder. What would happen first - his sternum breaking under the weight, or the stiletto heel piercing through his chest and into his heart? He doesn’t want to know. There’s only one thing he wants information on. “Is that really you, Crow?”

It had been a normal patrol up until this point. Joker had been gliding through the air, allowing gusts of wind to propel him through the air as he leapt from rooftop to rooftop. His focus had been shot, his body moving on automatic every time Navi informed him through the comm in his ear about a mugging or an attempted kidnapping happening on the streets below.

Navi had asked him if he wanted to take the night off for himself, considering the date, and he had said no. He was already over it. But it had been a lie. He could barely concentrate even on the simple task of keeping himself afloat at times, relying on Navi-made gadgets such as grappling hooks to keep himself from plummeting to his death at times when his aerokinesis failed him. 

He had been about to call it a night when a sudden shadow had barreled into him out of nowhere, shoving him onto the cold concrete of a high-rise rooftop, kicking him fiercely with a steel heeled boot until Joker coughed and rolled away to escape the pain. The comm rolls out of his ear and he briefly hears Navi’s staticky and panicked “Joker?!” before the assassin steps on it, destroying the earpiece with a light crunch.

When he stood up and took the first look at his attacker, he knew almost immediately that it was one of the rumoured Talons of the Court of Ravens, a mysterious group in the shadows of Tokyo, unknown to the general populace and even the hero community until recently. Clad in skintight black lycra, with a black helmet and pointy neckguard, he looked like the dictionary picture definition of “assassin.” The black mask on his face was so large that he could only make out from under is pale skin around a maniacal grin.

The fight had been short, but brutal, the Talon toying with him like a bored cat. Every bullet Joker fired at him was dodged carelessly, the movement inhuman in its smooth speed. Every time Joker tried to use his aerokinesis, he felt a foreign yet oddly familiar touch inside of his mind, clamping down around the power, as if someone was smothering him under a blanket. In fact, it was the Talon’s preference for using this method to stamp out Joker’s power that made him realize the identity. 

There is no one else Joker has ever trusted enough to let inside his head, and he can’t believe that Crow would come back in this way, exactly four years later since he left. The feeling of Crow’s mental fingers against his mind had always been soft and caressing, and he could recognize it even when it’s turned against him with malice. 

Joker couldn’t help but freeze in shock, his entire body locking up and refusing to cooperate even when the Talon took the opportunity to strike, leaping forwards so fast that Joker could have sworn there were two of them, bowling Joker over and standing on top of him, Joker’s own gun in the clawed hand, the sight trained right between Joker’s eyes. 

“How are you alive?” Joker asks up at Crow, his voice strangled. “I saw you die.”

“I know you did, Akira,” Crow says, and Joker already feels like he wants to combust because he sounds  _ exactly _ like Crow did - his voice soft and sweet and light despite the cruel smile on his face. “I know you watched me without lifting a single finger. After all the times I helped you in the past, you repaid me by doing  _ nothing _ .”

Joker shakes his head. He wants to close his eyes against the barrage of memories, but he also knows that the second he takes his eyes off of Crow, the assassin would shoot him dead on the spot. It’s not time yet for him to go. Not until he gets to the bottom of this. “I tried to help you. I -”

“Inaction is still action. You were the one who killed me, Joker,” Crow snaps, his voice a low snarl that Joker has never heard directed at him before. “You could have stepped in. You should have stepped in. I heard later that you were there watching the whole time as they tied me up and...and…”

There is a minute trembling in Crow’s hand, the gun wavering. The image of the aftermath, as Crow laid on the rooftop covered in blood and tears and sweat and white, was seared into the darkest corners of Joker’s mind, and he had only arrived at the scene in the last minutes of Crow’s life. He can’t imagine what it must be like, to have the hours and hours of torture playing before his mind’s eye like Crow must be experiencing now.

He feels horrible for taking advantage of the situation, but he forces Crow off of him with a sharp focused blast of wind, the lull in Crow's concentration enough that he can push through the power negation. Crow shrieks with fury as he’s knocked down, and he shoots the gun on reflex, the shot going wild and disappearing into the night. 

This is the only opening Crow would give him, and Joker pushes it as far and fast as he can. 

His one chance is in how Crow doesn’t seem inclined to use anything more advanced than his power negation on Joker, seemingly prefer to use physical weapons for whatever reason. From his place sprawled on the ground, Crow trains the gun back on Joker, the negation already back in effect, the muffling of the power damper an unwelcome buzz in his ears.

He rushes forward, twisting his body to the side to just barely miss the second bullet Crow fires - it grazes his side, causing a bloody sting, but it’s not enough to slow Joker down. He kicks the gun out of Crow’s hand and reaches out deftly to snatch it up in his right hand, performing a reverse somersault out of the way just as Crow reaches out with his claws and slashes into the concrete of the rooftop. 

Crow pulls out a dagger from his belt and brandishes it fiercely, though he seems reluctant to move now that Joker is the one with the weapon. 

“Why aren’t you using your powers?” Joker taunts, though he knows that the second Crow decides to do so, he would be dead. Without his aerokinesis, he would be no match for Crow’s telekinesis, especially surrounded as they are with heavy things for him to throw at Joker. 

“Hmph,” Crow huffs, the sound haughty and cruel. “I don’t need it to fight against you.”

In this situation though, it’s clear that he’s at a disadvantage, literally bringing a knife to a gunfight. Joker could kill him for a second time, make sure he’s really dead, before Crow could even take a step forward. 

Although, Joker grimaces, thinking back, perhaps Crow’s right. He had been able to dodge the bullets Joker shot at him earlier with a sort of horrifying ease that he must have gained later after becoming a Talon. Crow shot the gun twice in the minutes before Joker could reclaim the weapon, meaning there are only about two shots left.

Could he land a hit onto Crow with two chances? Maybe, if Lady Luck decided to grace him this night.

Could he in good conscience shoot Crow with a gun? Maybe, but much less certain.

“I knew you were there watching, you know,” Crow says and Joker’s focus darts back onto him.

Crow’s posture has changed, becoming more relaxed, settling his weight on one leg, though the knife in his hand is still raised and prepared to strike. There is a cruel smile twisting on the visible part of his face, condescending in a way that Crow never was even when in the midst of combat. 

Joker thinks back to that night - a night that he hasn’t thought about in years, but has been burned into his retinas after how many times he’s replayed it during the first year following Crow’s death. He arrived only in the last thirty minutes of it all, watching from the shadows as goon after goon took their turn letting out their frustrations onto Crow’s prone and tied-up body. Samael watching from the side, his gun trained onto Crow the entire time, in a threat.

He could have knocked Samael away, could have leapt down and protected Crow, but he had been rooted there, his legs locked together as if frozen in place. What if Samael pulled the trigger right as Joker blew him away? Who should he attack first - Samael or his underlings? Who was the greater threat? He didn’t know, his mind too much a mess to logic it out like he would normally. 

“I didn’t get there until the end,” Joker says frantically. Even to his own ears, it sounds like an excuse, and it doesn’t change Crow’s stance at all. “It took me hours to find you, with the way they scrambled up Navi’s tracker. I was searching for you all night, Crow.”

“You were watching while they killed me!” Crow screams, as if Joker didn’t say anything. “It doesn’t matter if you were there since the beginning or at the end. It just matters that you were  _ there _ and you didn’t  _ do anything! _ I’m dead because of you, I’m dead because you were too much of a fucking braindead dipshit to do  _ anything _ !”   


“They would have shot you!” Joker yells back. “Samael would have shot you b-before I could have saved you. O-or even his underlings. I didn’t know what to  _ do _ .”

Crow shakes his head. “We’ve saved hundreds of victims in the same position. None of them were ever killed. Just admit it, Joker. You didn’t care about me. You prioritized jerking off your disgusting penis over saving me.”

He can’t help but take a step back, his hand trembling as he holds it to his hair, pulling on it as he fights down the memory of standing in the shadows. Crow was right, in a way - he hadn’t frozen up just out of indecision. 

It had been the shock of seeing one of their own in that position. It had been his first time seeing a fellow hero as a civilian, as a victim to be saved, but even more, it had been his first time seeing Crow - the infallible leader and founder of the Phantom Thieves team - lying down in a pool of blood and cum. 

Watching as the broken hero sucked on the penis of a laughing goon, while two more busied themselves with...with…

Joker would be lying if he said he never thought about it. Stolen glances and secret smiles in the dead of night while reading together in the common room of the Phantom Thieves’ headquarters. Brushes against fingers as they walked next to each other in the halls, visiting their teammates to make sure they were okay after the latest battle. 

He could still remember one night, almost a year after they came together and formed the Phantom Thieves, when he had been crouched in front of Crow, patting a bandage over the stitches in Crow’s side after he blocked a hit that had been aimed at Joker’s back and earned himself a bleeding gash for his trouble. 

“Thank you for having my back,” Joker had smiled up at him, before looking down again. "I'm sorry I'm always holding you back."  


"You're not holding me back. We're partners. I'll always have your back, Akira," Crow had replied, voice soft with affection, "just like how you'll always have mine, right?"  


"Of course."

For some reason, neither of them said anything, and Joker’s hands were frozen on top of Crow’s skin. The silence stretched between them, strangely warm despite the awkwardness of its inception, and Joker had found himself moving in closer, Crow leaning forward as if drawn towards a magnet.

But before anything could happen, Panther and Violet had dropped in, their hands full of chocolates and flowers. As soon as Panther’s cheerful “Hey!” sounded out through the medical bay, the two had broken apart, looking down at the ground and laughing just too loudly at Panther and Violet’s jokes. 

That had been the one of the last nights before Crow was lured into Samael's trap.

The sight of Crow lying on the ground in a puddle of white and red while men took turns having their way with him should not have caused Joker to grow hard, and he had to admit that part of his inaction had been to deal with it, willing it down. 

By the time he controlled himself and stepped out to conjure a miniature twister to toss the everyone out and away from Crow, even flinging a few of them off the building and down to their presumed deaths, Crow was dead, a knife plunged so deep into his chest that the hilt was buried into the flesh, the blood barely leaking out.

Even after all this time, he still wasn’t completely sure what happened after, when Navi found them and Skull arrived as his backup. Everything was a haze, his body on autopilot while his mind stayed on that cold rooftop, his body warmth being leeched into the frigid corpse of Akechi Goro. When he finally came back to himself, he found himself standing in the midst of Crow’s funeral, watching as the heroes around him bowed tearfully as Crow was lowered into the ground.

“Crow, I -” Joker starts but he has to cut himself off when Crow charges him, dodging to the side so before Crow could bury the knife into his stomach. 

The Talon lets out a primal screech of rage and pivots, slashing with the knife. Joker barely dodges it, tilting his head back and feeling the blade slice off strands of his hair. The dance continues, Joker managing to avoid Crow’s blade with right before he could land a fatal strike. Crow’s movements are precise, never powered by emotion no matter how many times Joker ducks out of the way, despite the constant screams.

It’s like fighting against a rabid animal, Joker muses, as he ducks, feeling the breeze from the knife slash on the top of this head. He takes advantage of Crow’s unbalanced stance from his miss and tackles him to the ground, gripping Crow’s wrist and twisting it.

Crow hisses in pain and he drops the knife, the sound of the blade clattering to the ground startlingly loud in Joker’s ears. Crow’s head hits the ground hard, bouncing once, though the helmet protects him from the worst of it, and whatever mechanism keeping the mask on seems to have loosened from the impact. It slides off Crow’s face, landing on the ground next to him, and for the first time in almost four years, Joker looks into the dead eyes of his former partner.

This whole time, Joker had thought that there was something behind the mask, that it really was just  _ Crow _ there, underneath the anger and pain. He knows from Navi’s intel that Talons are usually emotionless, all of their humanity stripped away from whatever process they do in order to raise their warriors from the dead.

But somehow, he had thought that Crow would be different. It wasn’t even one of those “he’s always been special” kinds of sentimental drivel. The angered sense of betrayal in Crow’s voice as he yelled at Joker - that had been  _ real. _

He looks into the bright red of Crow’s eyes and sees nothing. The face is Akechi’s, but the expression is a stranger’s. 

“Well?” Crow asks. His lips are still curled in a cruel smirk, the callous smile seemingly a permanent feature of this Talon. “Do it. You killed me once. It should be easy the second time.”

“I’m not going to kill you, Crow,” Joker says. “I’m going to save you.”

“The Court already saved me. There is no one to save.”

“No.” Joker shakes his head. “They killed you. This isn’t you, Akechi. I’ll save you, even if it’s the last thing I do.”

“A true hero,” Crow laughs mockingly. 

“Sorry,” is the last thing Joker says before he punches Crow as hard as he could in the solar plexus. He feels and hears the crack of a bone, and he winces at the noise. Crow doesn’t even scream, falling limp with a soft “oof.”

Joker sits back, keeping his weight on Crow just in case, and pulls out a spare comm from his back pocket, activating it with the press of a button and putting it back into his ear. 

“-ker! Joker!!” Navi’s tearful voice is screaming into his ear. He wonders if she had been yelling the entire time during his encounter with Crow. 

“Navi, sorry. I’m here. I’m here,” Joker says soothingly.

He hears Navi gasp, and he can hear her hyperventilating in the earpiece as she struggles to collect herself. She gulps tearily and whimpers, “I thought he killed you. That you died just like…”

Joker breathes out a soft sigh and looks down at Crow, whose face when relaxed in sleep looks so much like…

“Send Skull or whoever is closest to my location. There’s something that I need to show you guys.”


End file.
